


Self-Flagellation (A Triptych in Return)

by Aboutnothingness (Thesherlockholmes)



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: (a note for this fic was: please exorcise all ballet rage here - that may indicate tone), (this is a technicality) - Freeform, Angst, Classic Film References, Dysfunctional Family, Eating Disorders, F/M, Gen, Gift Fic, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Loneliness, Perfectionism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prompt Fill, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thesherlockholmes/pseuds/Aboutnothingness
Summary: He has left Farrokh Bulsara behind. But looking through a sheen of tears, he can still glimpse the young boy tottering along in the dirt road. Maybe he was innocent, once. Maybe that is enough—to have held innocence like a gleaming pearl just once in your hand; perhaps that will carry you through until the end…From Zanzibar to Ealing to Queen, samplings of what made Freddie who he was.
Relationships: Freddie Mercury/Rosemary Pearson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Self-Flagellation (A Triptych in Return)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freddieofhearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddieofhearts/gifts).



> For the gorgeous & glorious spirit that is – FoH
> 
> Please note: this fic contains (relatively) graphic disordered eating behaviours and extreme perfectionism/self-criticism.

_“In one sense I was my war; my war was I; without it I should do nothing and be nothing.”_  
— Vera Brittain, _Testament of Youth_

-

Stepping into the house with its creaking wood floors, its floral papered walls—usually beautiful things that now seem to be only shadows on the wall—he feels the strain in the air; the forced quiet, the held breath, the waiting eruption.

The people here, under this roof, believe that being expelled is a gift, and that he ought to be grateful—allowing him to sit his exams was the kindest thing to do. He was miserable through them, but then, they would probably think that only proper. He’s been awful, hasn’t he?

Now, facing the result after long years, a final boat ride, he thinks of that line over and over, “I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, mother. I'm not afraid.” Oh, saviour, oh dear beacon of respite. He is not brave, he never was.

“Father,” he says to someone who is no longer his father.

Bomi’s eyes burn him to the quick.

Father is: refuge, strength, support. Bomi holds nothing for him but anger and disgust.

The stare holds—one second, two, three. And then the cowardice crashes in his breast, and Freddie looks down at the shoes he tried to polish on the boat ride home. They still do not shine, he has no way of working; no matter his effort, nothing ever turns out right.

No one says a word—mother or Bomi—and before the tears come, he feels their insistence in his clenched throat, he flees the room, up the old, now unfamiliar, creaking stairs.

He hears a door open just as he shuts his—Kashmira. He can’t bear to see her—to let her see _him_ : her brother, the stain on the family.

There’s a soft knock and through the dusty heated air of the room, he refuses her company.

The biting loneliness, now of his own volition, forces salt-water tracks to mar his face. He never was beautiful, but he knows from years of crying in the bogs and seeing his dreadful face after, how horrid he looks. How much, even now, like a child. Puffy red eyes, the quivering lip over ugly teeth.

As always, it’s a relief. Quietly, head turned into the pillow, body tightly collapsed, he cries until he’s wrung out, the pillow case damp, and his hands wet with the tears.

Sore eyes, still clotted throat. The sun has come down, the room is slanted with streaks of pure dark and thin shadow. He pulls his head up, heavy and useless, and looks around. The air holds the scent of a space unoccupied and long shut up. No one thought to open a window to air it out.

He listens to the silence; his ears ring with it.

Quickly though, his body tires of sitting and he curls up again on top of the bare sheets. Everything spirals into the single point of exhaustion and he closes his eyes, focuses on his aching heart—the only reassurance he is still living—and waits out the hours.

Anxiety turns his stomach—that feeling that has not left him a day since childhood—and he refuses supper. He feels better, then.

-

He left it behind him, along with his school trousers and scuffed shoes, when he entered art college. He bought a new pair of trousers, shoes, a white collared shirt. It was very neat, he thought. His life was going to be different from now on.

Only, of course, it wasn’t.

Here he was, again, a short year later—nose filled and overwhelmed by floral perfume, made nauseous by the scent of it… or perhaps it was the smell of the food on offer, too much like memories he has held back by many means—having just run off to the loo. Life likes to play jokes on you: to keep you running in circles, to keep reminding you of who you used to be.

He has left Farrokh Bulsara behind. But looking through a sheen of tears, he can still glimpse the young boy tottering along in the dirt road. Maybe he was innocent, once. Maybe that is enough—to have held innocence like a gleaming pearl just once in your hand; perhaps that will carry you through until the end… what a tender world that would be.

When they came to England, some of the strain repaired by necessity—the family drama paling in the face of possible execution—he still felt no ease. Everyone spoke now, somehow they had agreed it was resigned to the past. That life in a land now no longer theirs; better to leave old grievances and worries behind.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though, the family trait of forgetting. Here he is, coupled with dear Rosemary, and still wanting men, still wanting more: larger hands, stronger bodies, the familiarity of oneself.

It is a continuous task of forgetting, of ignorance—none of this is blissful. It is a useless, unending war. He will always lose. He is not made for a long fight—not this long, not endless.

When he came back from school, there was that very short period between the silence and the flurry of leaving in which he had shut himself up in his room, had refused anyone to set an eye on him—even, and maybe especially, Kashmira—and had been sick every day. He hardly ate those few weeks. That was a short, endurable war. Those he is good at.

Again, he finds himself picking at meals and then, with a calmness, locked in the bathroom sicking it up again. And that works for quite a long time, but you can’t go on like that forever, can you?

You don’t learn anything by it; it won’t change you, this folly fighting, child’s play. Keep kidding yourself, darling, just wait and see what happens.

He splashes his face with water, drinks some of it straight from the tap, and goes to join the others again. There’s not a thing left in him—physical or otherwise. Now he is a moldable, hollow shell.

This is the challenge of the moment: don’t stutter, don't be too loud, impress the others, as much as is needed to keep their company.

Freddie Bulsara is another creation when he steps out the door.

-

Mistakes are impermissible. This is fact. This is bone-marrow truth. What becomes of a man who makes mistakes, who makes the sort of mistakes he does? Nothing, that is the answer. And he wants success, a bright gleaming future goal: more than anything else he wants the power of undeniable, irrefutable stardom. Anything less than perfection is intolerable.

No mortal being is perfect—and he is not an angel.

Welling up in him at every cracked note, at every missed chord, is furious rage at his failing corporeal image. Every wrong a painful chip to his heart, the weight of it closing his throat and stinging his eyes under the stage lights. He blinks back the crushing disappointment in him—the tones of others beat his back, but at the forefront is his own: the cruelest, and most exacting critic. He knows how to hurt himself, he’s very good at it by now. Harshness is the only way to achieve any result.

The lights shutter down, the last chord has been struck. Everyone else—Brian, Roger, John—was all wonderful. There was not one thing amiss from them. Only him, the one who will always be painfully obvious when he fails.

He shakes with the inner knowledge—he counts the slips, the lisps, the missed beats. It isn't far from the stage to the dressing room.

The old adage: sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me, is laughably false. Both hurt you terribly and both can be wielded singularly at oneself.

The mirror seems as good as anything else to take the physical beating—such corporal punishment was never quite effective on him directly, exorcising it, however…

Breath quick and thoughts flying, the hair straightener is at hand and then thrown: a clack, no satisfactory crack, against the mirror, and then it’s displaced the drinks on the bureau. Nothing more.

There is nothing left for him now, is there? Nothing ever works when he has something to do with it.

The dressing room door opens and peals of laughter spill in. A hand claps his back: Roger.

“Good show tonight Freddie! Oi, Deacon, mind the wires next time, yeah? I saw you get a foot caught –”

Good show? Roger must be joking, must be –

“Well, if it weren't for your trailing cables – during your solo, Brian, Freddie nearly got caught up because you were walking all over the place.”

“I stay on my side of the fucking stage and you on yours, won't have any problem then –”

Good show? They’re all humouring him, aren't they? When will they get around to –

His eyes are stinging, and he wrings his jacket with shaking hands.

“Okay, okay, sorry I said anything you two. C’mon—Fred, a pint?”

That’s – that's it? Nothing about his awful –

“Hmm?”

“A pint? Could probably make it to The Kensington.”

“Oh, right, darling. Yes, of course.”

A good show, it was a good show.

Cracked voice, missed chords, lisp, the forgotten song title –

“Great, we going in this makeup or –”

Someone laughs, everyone laughs. Inside, his self-sliced heart stings, and the critiques keep his throat stopped up. He brushes out his hair, wipes away a stray tear, and turns to the others.

“Well, I will. I spent a fucking age putting it on.”

“Oh Christ, we’re going to get beat up this time for sure.”

“At least it won't be boring.” He teases, voice forced. Smiling, he prays they won't realise how hopeless he really is.

He’ll never improve working this way—slipping up with no punishment for it. How will he learn without –

Failure, he thinks looking in the mirror again, every bit of you. What will you amount to like this?


End file.
